Objective:
To investigate the employment of robotics to simplify and increase efficiency of an automated system used for cryopreserving insect embryos on a mass scale.

Approach:
To change the operation of an automated cryopreservation system whereby fluids are moved through a fixed container containing insect embryos to a system that moves containers of embryos through fixed sites of fluids used for treating embryos prior to storage in liquid nitrogen. While both systems are electronically-controlled, the use of robotic arms to execute the cryopreservation protocol can reduce the amount of liquids needed to process the embryos and cut down the circuits and computer programming required for operation of the assembly. Since many of the insects to be cryopreserved by this system are banned from the continental U.S., insects such as house flies, secondary screwworms, and green bottle blowflies will be used to test the robotic system. Testing the quality of insects cryopreserved with the robotic system will be compared to previous quality assessments conducted using automatic and laboratory systems.